Find your inspiration

Voluntary service

Usually when something is over we’ve got so many questions like “And now what? What’s next?”. I asked myself the same question after my graduation. And now what? What’s next? When we have just finished school we also ask the same. We all are wondering what we want to study, to work, but may be after the university you really realize that you’re adult and this makes everything quite complicated. The first piece of mind is “Oh my God, I am a grown up person!”, but then you realize that “adult” or “grown up” doesn’t mean “old” and there is no case to be old. Actually you think that you’re just grown up, but adult… I don’t think so.

I had the same dilemma after my graduation. The problem is that you have studied for something 4 years after then you realize that perhaps this “something” isn’t yours. It is more complicated if you have to think about your Master’s degree. What Master’s degree could I choose if I’m not sure that my Bachelor’s degree was what I really wanted to study? And for one moment you find a light in your mind which is not connected with what you want to study… In fact, the point is to find yourself.

Actually one of the most important things in our lifes is exactly to find yourself. What I mean, my point is you can’t continue with nothing in your life if you are not clear with yourself. I saw how important is. And my first “crash” with this was after my Graduation.

It happened that I went to a seminar in France, where I met one Bulgarian volunteer and she had chosen Montpellier for her EVS. Then I decided to ask her to tell me more about EVS. EVS or European Voluntary Service offers young Europeans the chance to make a real difference to the world and to their own lives – through the European Voluntary Service. The European Voluntary Service (EVS) provides young people with the unique chance to express their personal commitment through unpaid and full-time voluntary activities in a foreign country within or outside the EU. In this way, it seeks to develop solidarity, mutual understanding and tolerance among young people, thus contributing to reinforcing social cohesion in the European Union and to promoting young people’s active citizenship.After all I heard I made my personal point of view that EVS was exactly what I had been searching for and could help me to find myself and to become aware of what I really wanted to do. Evgeniya, the Bulgarian volunteer in France, told me about her experience, difficulties, the good and the bad moments. She told me about how many new people she had met there and that she had explored the French culture very closely. Her words made me understand that “my place” wasn’t my place and I probably needed that kind of adventure.

I was thinking about what would be the most interesting for me and with what I could be helpful if I become a volunteer. It wasn’t difficult for me. I can work with children with health problems like epilepsy. I am also an epileptic and for the last 8 years I have been searching for more and more information about all the medical and non-medical methods of healing and what could be helpful for the children with epilepsy to become more sociable, communicative and the most important thing, to make them feel not sick and not rejected. I decided that I have got the basic and maybe the most important- I know what I want to do and can do as a volunteer and I started to search. My first wish was Italy. But in one moment I started to participate in seminars and conferences too often and there I met volunteers from other countries, and I realized that I want so much to be a volunteer. And then…we came here in Aachen as participants in this seminar in the field of journalism. Groups with
young people from seven countries, visits to Maastricht, Brussels, Cologne, Bonn! Amazing experience, but totally changed my first wish about EVS in Italy.

At this moment I’m writing this article from the room where we all are doing the same thing. I’m watching the participants and I’m wondering that may be Germany is my inspiration or may be I feel the nostalgia because this is our last day in Aachen all together. I’m wondering that maybe it is because of the people and di
fferent cultures. For sure all that makes me feel more confident than I have never been before about what I really want, but my inspiration is still Evgeniya – the girl who was in France for four months, but changed my life only for four days.